This is one of a pair of highly ornamented and purely ornamental ewers made for Senator Giovanni Battista Scarlatti by Massimiliano Soldani, re Soldani's post in Medici court, the most renowned worker in bronze in Florence in the late baroque period. On one side of this massive monumental ewer the sea-god Neptune is depicted, surrounded by tritons blowing on conches, and others fighting. On the other side a bearded triton rides a sea horse, also amidst tritons. A bare-breasted winged female figure forms the handle. Shell-like forms further enliven the surface, and four dolphins coil themselves around the base. Hugh Honour noted that Sir Horace Mann (1701-86), the British consul in Florence, was negotiating for the purchase of some Soldani bronzes for George Bubb Doddington in 1759, and suggested that these could be the ones currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Charles Avery has recently discovered references to the ewers in Soldani's correspondence, some of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1722 Soldani evidently offered to cast further bronze versions for Senator Scarlatti, and in 1732 made the same suggestion to an Italian merchant resident in London, Giovanni Giacomo Zamboni (1683-1753). However it seems unlikely these were ever made (I am grateful to Charles Avery for this information).

The ewers were cast from wax models, and the moulds used in this process were later employed to create ceramic examples in coloured Doccia porcelain. Examples of these Doccia porcelain versions are now in the Museo Civico, Turin.